


time and tide/taste of death

by brave_atheart



Series: never the same way twice [4]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: AU - Edmund survives the train crash, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Co-dependent siblings, Gen, Grief & Mourning, Post-Book: The Last Battle (Narnia), The Problem of Susan, Travel, the sea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25564435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brave_atheart/pseuds/brave_atheart
Summary: “When her brother is finally well enough to be let out of hospital, Susan is waiting out front with their parents’ car and all of their suitcases jammed in its trunk.“
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie & Susan Pevensie
Series: never the same way twice [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/382750
Comments: 6
Kudos: 67





	time and tide/taste of death

**Author's Note:**

> “Time and tide wait for no man.”- English proverb.
> 
> “Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.” - Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.

After the crash, Susan begins to pack. 

Between the first phone call and the last funeral, her nights are spent stuffing sensible shoes into suitcases and debating which books to leave behind. Her days are spent in Edmund's hospital room as he recovers arduously. 

The sight of his mangled leg and battered body is nothing compared to the expression on his face when she breaks the news. 

“Gone?” he whispers hoarsely. 

“Dead,” she murmurs. 

“And now?” he asks. Ever-thoughtful. 

“We’ll leave,” she says decisively. “As soon as you’re well. We needn’t stay in England a moment longer.” England, with its rampant lions and heraldic arms, and a young Queen on the throne. With their families’ ghosts around every corner. There’s no place for them here. 

Susan watches her brother square his jaw and clench his fists when his bandages are changed. 

_I’ve had worse_ , he seems to be saying to her, with a challenging glint in his eye. _You know I’m strong enough to bear this._

He subsides into a fit of coughing, and Susan feels a burst of misplaced anger.

Something has shifted within her, something which has lifted the stubborn fog she’d placed over her own memories. Sitting beside his hospital bed and holding Edmund’s hand, Susan thinks she remembers a lance that had pierced his shoulder once, by a centaurs’ strong hand in a tournament. There had also been, she recalls, those terrible gashes from a wild boar which had slashed him in their youth. And she has an image of twin scars he’d carried from a curved Calormene blade along his forearm. And of course, there had been the Witch’s stone wand, and her wicked knife. These new injuries are an awful reminder of what he has survived, time and again. The life he has snatched back from the Lion’s jaws of Death. What is she to do with those memories? 

When her brother is finally well enough to be let out of hospital, she's waiting out front with their parents’ car and all of their suitcases jammed in its trunk. 

She is itching to leave. The verdant hills and misty rains and cheerful villages would suffocate a pair of thieves like Susan and Edmund. For that’s how Susan feels, as she sees her brothers’ pale face appear behind the frosted glass of the entrance doors. Like she’s stealing something that doesn’t belong to her. Edmund grimaces as the matron leads him out into the weak sunshine and down the hospital steps, and when Susan grips his arm she is overwhelmed by a vicious surge of possessiveness. 

“Alright, Su,” he mutters placatingly, as her nails dig into him. She resists the urge to press a kiss to his temple, knowing he would hate her fussing. Knowing it’s something Lucy could have done with ease, and that he would have welcomed it from her. She ushers him to the car instead. 

“How about Greece?” Edmund suggests, panting a little as she helps him slide into the passenger seat and stow his crutches beside him. “Or Rome? I could do with someone else’s history.” A shadow passes over his face. 

Susan remembers the crumbling, dismal, broken remnants of Cair Paravel, its stones and memories scattered across the cliffside. 

“I’ve had enough of ruins,” she snaps, and gets behind the wheel. 

So they decide to cross the ocean. America had suited Susan well enough once before, and now she is longing for its youth and vitality. She and Edmund book two bunks aboard a steamer bound for New York, and Susan pushes her brother’s borrowed wheelchair up the gangplank while he balances their bags on his lap. She snags his finger under the spokes - “Ouch, Su!” - and he curses as she maneuvers the wheels over the side. But when they’re settled on board the lull of the waves is a balm to her aching heart. 

Edmund surveys the dock. “Who would have thought,” he says softly.

The ghost of the _Splendor Hyaline _sails past them. Susan feels a bristling in her spine, and stamps down the impulse to place her hands over her ears. Instead, she hands him his crutches and enlists the help of a porter to direct them to their little room below deck.__

____

____

“Sleep,” she says gently, watching the fatigue crawl across Edmund’s stubborn face. 

____

____

But he glares at her from the lower bunk. “I will if you will,” he shoots back, and Susan understands that it’s a fear of dreams that’s got hold of him. 

____

____

Peter would have known what to say, or even what not to say - how to be so warm and open-hearted that his courage left no room for doubts or fears. 

____

____

“Enough,” she sighs. 

____

____

He doesn’t push, only goes silent and remains alert, watching as she crams jumpers into their small chest of drawers. 

____

____

And perhaps this is why they have been left alone. Susan the doubter and Edmund the traitor — such epithets remain stamped on the hearts of those who bore them, even if there’s no else one left to remind them. It’s enough to make them both wary and restless. Its enough to give them dreams. Maybe it was enough to leave them both behind. 

____

____

...

____

____

One early morning they are the only passengers on deck. There’s a sea squall building ahead, and there’s a nip in the air. They sit on deck chairs on the port side, facing the rising sun, and Susan drapes a huge woolen blanket brought up from their cabin across them both. 

____

____

_If only Peter and Lucy were here,_ she thinks , _then everything would be perfect. ___

______ _ _

______ _ _

Then again, the salt breeze does conjure memories of Edmund leaned overboard, the wind whipping his hair as he tossed a grin over his shoulder. And even still, things never happen the same way twice.

______ _ _

______ _ _

“You were right,” she murmurs, breaking the sea-silence. Nothing is ever truly quiet on the open water, not with the lap of waves and rush of wind and birdsong about you. But it is quiet enough at dawn in their little corner of the observation deck. “This suited us once,” she confesses, gesturing to the water around them as his dark gaze settles on her. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

“For a time,” he agrees cautiously. He rubs at his leg unconsciously, fingers twitching. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Let’s never dock,” she says, her voice wistful and brittle as sea-glass. It’s the loveliest idea, being forever moor-less, forever unanchored. She wants to be nameless, guiltless. Godless and free. “We’ve sailed together before. Let’s do it again.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

Edmund stares out over the choppy waves. She wonders if he understands. Then:

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Alright,” he says, so quiet it’s almost lost to the wind. “Let us be sailors, then, you and I.” 

______ _ _

______ _ _

...

______ _ _

______ _ _

So when they dock in New York, and the rush and bustle of the city proves indeed to be entirely unwelcome, they travel north, to the quiet shores of Nova Scotia where the cadence of the land is more familiar. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

They have more than enough, with their inheritance, to buy a battered old houseboat. They make themselves a home on the waves off the coast of Halifax. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

Some days it feels like she and Edmund will always be divided: forgiven and not, forgotten and not. There's space between the four of them now, always, the memories of Lucy and Peter parted from them as if by a veil. They sail, and Susan wonders if Aslan would ever take them back - if they would each be allowed to break the rules just one more time. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

...

______ _ _

______ _ _

They go into town for supplies every fortnight or so, and avoid the well-meaning inquiries from the lovely people interested in their unusual habits. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

Susan watches Edmund climb back aboard to cast off and feels like a thief, again, as she had outside Edmund’s hospital. Keeping him close, and anything else away. Only now she is also stealing peace, and anonymity. Running from ghosts, running from roots. She’s waiting for a loophole, she knows - something to beckon her, to show her the way. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

“I’ve been having a dream,” she confesses one afternoon, raising her voice over the sound of the warm summer rain that has begun to drizzle down. “I dream that we’re sailing, but we’re on a great lake of tar, and—“ her voice catches, but she presses on. “And Aslan, he’s drowning in it.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

Edmund doesn’t even flinch, just pulls a ballast line tight and calls back to her. “I dream of summer,” he cries, as she joins his efforts in hauling the slippery thing down. “Lucy riding ahead of me on her horse, and Peter getting drunk on ice-wine with the maenads,” he splutters a laugh around the rain sluicing down his face. Their hands overlap as they succeed in wrestling the rigging into position. “I dream of you, dancing with the wind spirits at the Midsummer Festival,” he says.

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Do you really?” she challenges him. Frost used to haunt Edmund’s dreams, she knows. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

He lifts his chin. “Does it matter?” he asks, and Susan wants to howl along with the wind. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

The Atlantic ocean churns under them, and later when the skies are calm the reflection of the stars ripple in the wake of their little boat. Susan isn't sure anymore what sky they’re under. Clear northern skies would always make her think of Peter. She watches the horizon tinged pink and golden with the sunset, and thinks of how the sea is the element of love - Aphrodite emerged from the water, born from sea foam, fresh from the waves. The sea that was Lucy’s domain, in all its glory. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

...

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Come on,” she says another night, when the waves are calm and so is her heart. She holds out a hand to her brother. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

A half-frown flickers across his face. “I can’t,” he protests, gesturing to his leg. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

Susan remembers countless balls where he’d been her reluctant dance partner. She thinks of a flash of candlelight, of Lucy’s bright voice ringing out while Peter toasts the musicians. Edmund cracking a joke about some ambassador into her ear, making her grin into his shoulder as they glide across the floor. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

She considers him now, sees his moody face and his stiff leg. “You never could,” she sniffs, and helps him to his feet. They sway together, Edmund doing a sort of shifting two-step as Susan circles around him. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Last week. Why didn’t we celebrate Lucy’s birthday?” Edmund asks abruptly. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

In their awkward embrace, it’s easy to avoid his gaze. “What would you have had us do?”

______ _ _

______ _ _

He clicks his tongue. “You know. We could have marked the occasion.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

Susan pulls away from him and shakes her head. “Why?” she asks, without any venom. Then she sighs, scrubbing a hand across her face. “I don’t have a sister,” she explains bitterly. “I don’t have anyone but you.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

He grips her tightly and forces her to look into his eyes. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Listen to me,” he implores. “You are still their sister,” he says fiercely. “You are, even though they’re gone,” he says, urging her to understand. She feels the callouses of his hand against the skin of her arms. “Don’t you know that? And,” he adds swiftly, “you‘ll still be my sister after I am dead.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

It’s very close to the echo of _Once a Queen, always a Queen_ , but when he puts it this way Susan finds it easier to bear. It isn’t, she finally sees, about obligation, or even reality. It’s not about any false comfort. Rather, it’s about the endurance and timelessness of love.

______ _ _

______ _ _

She tucks her chin back against his shoulder and they sway together, suspended in unheard music and unseen memories. “Alright,” she whispers, and he presses a kiss to her temple. The moment is simple and patient and for an instant, she almost feels religious, a feeling that was lost between silence and grief and loneliness, lost in spite of all of their best efforts. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

Edmund was not always kind, Susan knows, but he has always been thoughtful. That is what let him be kind again, when he had nearly forgotten how. And now Edmund moves sideways through this life with her, savoring each new moment.

______ _ _

______ _ _

Edmund doesn't go looking for loopholes , she realizes. She steals a glance at his profile, lit from behind by the hazy glow of the the setting sun, so his face is cast in shadow.  He waits for the loopholes to find him.

______ _ _

______ _ _

It is this understanding that eventually lets her agree to give up their watery home and dock in Halifax. When the day comes, she puts an arm around him, her little brother, and they carry on together. She crosses her footsteps over each other when they step off the gangplank onto dry land again. She pictures the zigzagging path she's leaving behind, imagines the imprint of her steps lit up, or else painted in a rainbow trail like children's chalk drawings on the street. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

Edmund adjusts his crutch in the rough gravel surrounding the docks. "Where to?" he asks, gesturing ahead of them. Behind them, the ocean, and their little ship, their life of solitude. Ahead of them, a chance. She considers the shifting sprawl of the world before her, with its infinite unknown still waiting to be discovered. She thinks of their journey over these long months, weaving away from their past. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

_I'm tired of running_ ,  she realizes . _I'm tired of trying to escape._

______ _ _

______ _ _

"I don't know," she admits, and slows her pace beside him. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

For now, she doesn’t need to. She knows that she and Edmund will one day find their way home.

______ _ _


End file.
